{"id":1989331,"date":"2025-08-31T06:28:56","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T06:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1989331"},"modified":"2025-08-31T06:28:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T06:28:56","slug":"discourage-oakland-band-talk-new-lp-label-drop-song-feat-meghan-oneil-punch-super-unison-features","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/discourage-oakland-band-talk-new-lp-label-drop-song-feat-meghan-oneil-punch-super-unison-features\/","title":{"rendered":"Discourage: Oakland Band Talk New LP, Label + Drop Song feat. Meghan O\u2019Neil (Punch, Super Unison) | Features"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\t\t\t\tBy Carlos Ramirez<\/a> |
\n\t\t\t\t@noechonet<\/a> |<\/p>\n

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Photo: Kevin Talley\/Runaways Media<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The last time Discourage made an appearance on No Echo was via Adam Yoe’s (huge) thumbs up piece on their 2022 debut album, Disaster Fatigue<\/em>. The Oakland hardcore quintet’s\u00a0go-for-the-throat tempos and instantly memorable lyrics always deliver that way. It’s a crime more people in the hardcore community aren’t up on them yet.<\/p>\n

With\u00a0In Lieu of Flowers…<\/em> coming out soon, things should be changing in that last regard. Recently joining the\u00a0WAR Records roster (Home Invasion, World I Hate), Discourage’s sophomore album was produced by the group’s drummer, Matt Tyler, and is their meanest-sounding material yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I spoke with Tyler, and vocalist Eric Pocock, about the making of\u00a0In Lieu of Flowers…<\/em>, their place within the hardcore scene, and why they’re still so deeply involved with it all.<\/p>\n

As a bonus, we’re also streaming two cuts from the forthcoming album\u2014”Gadsden” and “Clear”\u2014with the former including vocals from Meghan O’Neil (Super Unison, Punch).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The last time we heard new music from the band was the Disaster Fatigue<\/em> LP. Three years is an eternity in hardcore! I know you\u2019ve been playing shows during that time, but why did you wait this long to release new music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Matt Tyler):<\/strong>\u00a0I think there\u2019re a couple reasons. First, we\u2019re all older guys with adult lives so this is one thing amongst many priorities we all have. So the process of getting a record written and recorded can drag a little more when you\u2019re balancing a bunch of different things whether jobs, travel, hobbies, family stuff, whatever.<\/p>\n

We also went through a member change in the middle of writing. Our bassist Alex left to focus on other projects and our good friend Israel Branson joined, and there was time spent getting everyone ready and up to speed, and then scheduling recording.<\/p>\n

And another reason is that I personally wanted to take a little extra time to really get truly ready for drum tracking so I learned to play along to a click track, which I had never previously done. Lots of reasons, personal and \u201cprofessional.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo: Vanessa Caron-Cantin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

I see that Matt handled production duties on this new record. Tell me a bit about the writing and recording process.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Eric Pocock):<\/strong> Matt put so much blood sweat and tears into the production of this record he deserves all the burritos in San Diego.\u00a0Once we decided we wanted to make another record, we knew that there were some changes we wanted to make to differentiate from Disaster Fatigue.<\/p>\n

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The mantra I kept repeating during the writing process was \u201cmake the fast parts faster, the slow parts heavier, and the whole thing meaner.\u201d I\u2019d been listening to a lot of Punch, Coke Bust, No Tolerance, Ceremony, En Love, and other really fast, gritty hardcore and that definitely had a huge impact on the songs that came out.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As far as the actual writing went, this one was a little different than prior releases. There are a couple songs on here that we all wrote together but quite a few were written essentially over a 2-3 week stretch in my old living room. I would write the track, film myself playing it on guitar to send to the guys, and then usually Matt and I would get together to add drums and turn a collection of riffs into an actual song.<\/p>\n

Once we had that foundation we\u2019d show it to the guys to add a little \u201cstank\u201d to it and then Matt recorded demos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(Matt Tyler):<\/strong>\u00a0It was cool to have the opportunity and resources to do a lot of the recording work ourselves. A lot of my work beyond recording the guitars, bass, and vocals was coordinating how we were going to execute this whole thing without taking a week off work to go into a studio. Alex Jacobelli at Sunsick Studios in San Diego, who did our last record, and mixed this one, was a super helpful collaborator in giving me ideas for how to make this happen.<\/p>\n

You really don\u2019t need big budget equipment, just a laptop, a few pieces of gear, some technical know-how, and, most important, organization and foresight. As Eric mentioned, part of our writing process includes recording pre-production demos. I think we learned after the first LP and early 7\u201ds that there\u2019s a huge benefit to getting tracks recorded, listening back, and then making adjustments based on what you hear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the record itself, we did all the drum tracking at Butchertown Studios with Marc Estabillo, who does a lot of work with many of the young Bay Area bands that are getting attention these days. Funny story: we had a little snafu during the drum tracking and I ended up having to come back a few weeks later and record everything again in one day instead of two.<\/p>\n

But my performance was better in the second session. I banged it all out in a few hours and all was well. Then it pretty much was a process of working around everyone\u2019s busy schedules and spending a lot of evenings and weekends in our practice space dialing in tones, tracking, and passing files around. Doing it this way allowed us to review, listen deeply, and decide where we wanted to make some changes, not to mention do it cost effectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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